Waves of protesters are refusing to comply with the latest crackdowns on dissent, but the penalties are higher in Starmer’s Labour Britain than in Trump’s autocratic United States, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Is the ‘paranormal’ poppycock?
Most phenomena have an explanation, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY, but occasionally ‘anomalous’ events have led to new scientific understanding
From Amazon’s monitored warehouse hell to delivery workers being paid per package, exploitative work destroys collaborative relationships young people need — more screen time and 12 new AI ‘friends’ will only make things worse, writes ALAN SIMPSON
From Grangemouth’s closure to Europe’s highest drug deaths, 23 per cent of children in poverty and ferries seven years late, all parties who’ve governed in the last 20 years lack vision or inspiration — we need a new way forward, writes NEIL FINDLAY
The Tatar rebel argued that Western workers could be bought off, so instead a ‘colonial international’ must form a dictatorship over Europe and the US, ideas that led to his expulsion from the Bolsheviks and eventual execution, writes EDMUND GRIFFITHS
If Labour MPs who rebelled over the welfare reforms expected to be listened to, they shouldn’t have underestimated the vindictiveness of the Starmer regime. But a new left party that might rehome them is yet to be established, writes ANDREW MURRAY
HEATHER WOOD reports back from another packed annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, where Palestinian flags flew high and solidarity with Birmingham’s striking refuse workers was central
IF YOU mean beyond human understanding, then the answer is yes — “paranormal” is poppycock. “Paranormal” implies that phenomena exist that are above, beyond, or contrary to scientific or “normal” explanations of how our world works.
A materialist approach, however, asserts that there is nothing that, in essence, is incapable of explanation although there is a good deal for which an explanation has yet to be generally accepted.
Well before Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 text The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, it was recognised that science was not just a straight, linear road to the “truth” but progressed in fits and starts.
More from this author
Most currently popular arguments for degrowth describe a real problem without recognising its true cause – capitalism’s insatiable need to accumulate, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
The fight to defend public services is as important as the struggle over wages, but presents different challenges to workplace organising — especially with regards to bourgeois propaganda and conditioning, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Marx and Engels’ concern with soil provides a focus for understanding the relationship between capitalism and the environment, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Statues and other icons can enforce power and domination but they can also help us challenge that power, writes the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
